Five Life Lessons Parents Can Teach Kids During Corona Virus Lockdown
Don’t meltdown during the lockdown.
Use this tough time to share valuable lessons.
If your kid isn’t a home schooler, then your world just got rocked. Kids are home. So are we. All together, 24-7. We’re now learning that most schools will remain closed at least through the end of April. Yikes!
Do your kids crank through their “virtual schoolwork” in a fraction of the time of a normal school day? Is your time and attention diverted from your important work tasks as a result? Do you or your kids have anxiety about what’s going to happen next? Are tensions running high in your household?
Corona Lockdown Challenges Both Parents and Kids
No doubt about it, school closures result in an abrupt uptick in stress and a sudden collapse of structure as we knew it. Heck, this should get an official pandemic name all of its own because it’s a fast-spreading contagion affecting us all. At minimum, every family member has been infected with a varied combination of grief and loss, disappointment, anger, powerlessness, sadness, impatience, fear, uncertainty, anxiety, and confusion. That’s a pretty powerful mix of emotions for a single household.
The additional financial hardship and scarcity of resources that has hit previously financially stable households can further destabilize emotional regulation in homes nation-wide. No parent, or kid, can be expected to be at their best when struggling with this experience plus so many feelings all at once. So, the important question to ask is: How are housebound parents and their students of all ages going to survive this current circumstance?
The answer lies in the mindset and behaviors we adopt in this period of extended school closures. We have powerful influence on mitigating our children’s stress response and their ability to continue learning during this anxiety provoking time. One of our worst enemies in times of fear and uncertainty is the future trip: imagining worst-case scenarios and adopting mindsets and behaviors as if our stories are true. Opportunities for future tripping, emotional escalation, and intense family conflict are in abundant supply, especially now.
Lockdown Parenting Creates New Opportunities
Also available, however, are opportunities for us parents to capitalize on the larger life lessons imbedded in shelter-in-place orders. In the weeks to come, our home is the classroom where we parents have an unprecedented opportunity to teach our children the important subject of Emotional Intelligence.
Here are some important lessons inherent in our current lockdown that kill two birds with one stone: short-term, they will help us prevent and minimize meltdowns (theirs and ours.) Long-term, this education equips our child with much needed skills and tools that will serve them well into adulthood.
Corona Virus Helps Parents Instill Valuable Life Skills in Kids
Delayed gratification
This skill is about choosing to accept and comply with short-term pain in order to maximize long-term pleasure. It is a key component of emotional intelligence and our lockdown situation is amplifying this core life lesson. Our empathy for our child’s disappointment about not getting to have what they want right now helps them tolerate the sting of disappointment. Our optimism helps diminish their sense of urgency about their need (or want). When we embody parental acceptance and hopefulness, we model the mindsets and feelings required to delay instant gratification.
We vs. Me
Childhood development ideally progresses from egocentricity into genuine cooperation and collaboration. Our youth are being asked to restrict their freedoms and put aside their natural self-centeredness so that others who are more vulnerable in our communities are better protected. Highlighting our kid’s compliant behavior with this larger moral ideal – rather than their bad attitude about it – reinforces their sacrificial role in this urgent and important group effort.
Reprioritizing
Parents can help the family redefine what is urgent versus important to fit current circumstances. While it may have been important to stick to a budget before COVID-19, perhaps now we need to reprioritize our spending and saving. From online clothes shopping to eating out, recognizing that our priorities have shifted helps shape the new attitudes and behaviors required from each family member in the weeks to come. Revealing the big picture landscape in the context of this unprecedented shutdown demonstrates flexibility, responsiveness, and acceptance of reality.
Healthy coping skills
Now, more than ever, our ability to cope is being tested. Parents can set excellent examples of workable choices that invite emotional regulation. We become “family leaders” when we recognize that healthy coping skills can look different for each family member and family system. Our Type A teenager may not need a rigid structure but our laid-back tween might benefit from a collaboratively created daily structure with built-in time for solo and group leisure activities that feed her soul.
Life skills
Now is an opportune time to promote our child to Gardener in Chief, Chief Executive House Cleaner, or Head Chef. Whether sautéing, weeding, taking out the garbage, or mopping floors, there’s plenty of purposeful tasks for all ages. When we solicit the partnership of our child, we reduce our workload, they contribute meaningfully to our households, and they learn skills they will need when they fly from our nest.
Home is the training ground for how the world works and we are our kid’s head coach in this game called Pandemic. These 5 lessons help us minimize meltdowns during the lockdown and fortify our kids’ hearts and souls (not to mention our own) with grit and resilience during COVID-19 and beyond.
Let’s do this home schooling thing!